France

Wednesday

Steerpike

Does Ed Miliband feel betrayed by Francois Hollande?

President Hollande’s private life continues to fascinate the whole world (other than the French press pack, obviously); but it is worth noting that the embattled president signalled a major shift in economic policy yesterday. France is a couple of years late to the austerity party; but it will experience €50 billion worth of cuts in 2015 – 2017, on top of the €15bn scheduled for this year. When Hollande won the Élysée, he promised ‘another way’. But he’s been mugged by reality. Austerity est arrivé. All of which is a little embarrassing for Ed Miliband, who told ITV in May 2012: ‘I congratulate Francois Hollande. I know from our conversations in London

Tuesday

Steerpike

Francois Hollande is hacked off with the press

Francois Hollande, was framed by a set of panto-esque red curtains as he attempted to conduct a gigantic U-turn on fiscal policy while simultaneously fending off interest in the identity of the First Lady of France. The President wanted to sound and appear dignified; but it seemed to Mr S that his make-up had been painted by a malevolent clown. The leader of the Fifth Republic puckered his tiny, baby pink lips and proceeded with his economic statement. My filthy Anglo-Saxon mind made it seem that the spiel began with a procession of double entendres. ‘We’re talking about going faster, going further, going in more depth,’ he promised. ‘We must

Patrick Marnham

A bad week for ‘President Normal’ just got worse

So she’s been fired! We now know why Valérie Trierweiler, the established companion of the president of the republic is currently in hospital suffering from ‘a severe case of the blues’. That must surely be the clear implication of President Hollande’s refusal at his New Year’s press conference to confirm that Valérie is still First Lady of France. This afternoon the most powerful man in France emerged from between the marble pillars and gorgeous tapestries of the Élysée Palace, a dapper little figure in a blue suit, wearing rimless designer specs and dyed brown hair.  His audience included the entire government and an international press corps and spoke for 45 minutes with his customary

Monday

Steerpike

The President, his mistress and the Mob

There was a moment when it looked like French Closer had done President Hollande a favour. His poll ratings have been abysmal and the economy has tanked. What better distraction than a little ooh la la? Scandals such as these reveal the character of a nation and its politics. If a British minister had dispatched his chauffeur to fetch post-coital croissants, there would have been delirious uproar about the misuse of taxpayers’ money. But the French have never really cared about politicians wasting their money: National Assembly Deputies take home the equivalent of £211,000 in pay, and enjoy completely unaudited expenses. Most Parisians seem more surprised that the much derided

Friday

Isabel Hardman

What François Hollande’s latest crisis means for Westminster politics

Beyond the slew of amusing ‘No man’s hand’ photos of the beleaguered François Hollande trying and failing to find support from other European leaders, there are a number of implications for the British political scene of the beleaguered French leader’s latest crisis, in which he has been forced to admit that taxes have been too heavy while watching his country’s manufacturing sector fall behind that of Greece and borrowing costs rise. The first is that David Cameron has a perfect case study of what happens when you stick your fingers in your ears and repeatedly say there is an alternative. He’s already deployed that case study this year in his

Thursday

Adam Zamoyski

The men who invented Napoleon

Writing about Napoleon is a risky business. It exposes the author to the brickbats of the blind worshippers for whom he is a numinous hero and the equally challenged detractors who see in him only the petty tyrant. By the same token, most historians find themselves negotiating a slippery path between approval and censure of this most controversial and somehow still very relevant figure. It is one of Philip Dwyer’s great merits that he remains so detached from his subject that he makes the reader forget his own prejudices. He approaches it with the discipline of a chemist in his laboratory: he is understanding of his protagonist but not sympathetic.

Thursday

Bérénice Lee Roseau

Liberté, égalité, pornographie

Bravo Melanie McDonagh. Your stand against the coarsening of society’s sexual sensibilities is very welcome. But it is not just in Britain that porn has gone mainstream. We French now have our share of outrageously lewd tastes, too. Long gone are the days when the French could hide their perversions behind a veneer of sophistication, as if sex was somehow something that the French did in a classier – plus distingué – way. Our revolutionary ancestors would roll in over in their graves if they knew how unenlightened and childish we have become when it comes to pleasures of the flesh. Crude, cheap sexual material, whether it is on TV

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Going off-piste in Val D’Isere

First things first. Yes, Val d’Isère does have a reputation for being expensive — and it is, especially if you’re planning on eating out and embracing the après ski every night. But no matter what anyone says, you can’t argue with the fact that the skiing is fantastic. Combined with its neighbour, Tignes, there’s a total of 330km of piste to explore, with plenty of steep red and blue runs that are perfect for intermediate and advanced skiers. One of the most frequent complaints about skiing in Val is getting home at the end of the day. Almost every route down to the main town is a challenge, even if

Tuesday

Bérénice Lee Roseau

It’s tempting to compare France’s National Front with Ukip — but wrong

There is today only one united French political party, and it is the National Front. The FN has been profiting from a split French right, a hopeless French left and from the general disenchantment with the political class. It is tempting then to compare, as Agnes Poirier did in the Times, the FN’s recent success with that of Ukip in Britain. Tempting, but wrong. The National Front is 30 years older than Ukip, and a very different beast. It supports protectionist policies, while Ukip promotes a more libertarian and democratic approach. The FN’s ‘progressive tax’ – a rising income tax – clearly contrasts with the flat tax advocated by Ukip. Some

Thursday

Duncan Fallowell

The World According to Karl, edited by Jean-Christophe Napias – review

Every fashion era has its monster and in ours it’s Karl Lagerfeld, a man who has so emptied himself on to the outside that there is no longer any membrane between what he is, what he does and what he looks like: a macabre dandy for the electronic age, a Zen businessman as effective as Andy Warhol or Michael Jackson or David Bowie in propagating product and persona as one. ‘I enjoy the luxury of being at the centre of this complete universe that’s mine,’ he says with the concentrated generosity of a narcissist who wants to thrill the whole world in order to make it his pool. The eternal

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke: The day I walked into a postcard

This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the front of that postcard was contemporary, but the colours were digitally manipulated to invest the image with a nostalgic, hand-tinted, vintage air. The square was eerily deserted. No customers were seated at the tables under the gay sunshades set out under the trees. Time stood still. I’d never been there. I hadn’t even heard of the place. And yet the square and its forsaken tables seemed oddly familiar. The photograph transmitted a nostalgic sweetness which was almost sinister. An invitation was implied. ‘Come!’ the picture seemed to be saying. ‘Life!

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A windfall tax on monster basements could solve London’s housing problem

The mega-rich are best housed behind high fences, on wooded estates patrolled by dogs; that way, they don’t have to annoy the rest of us. But I can see how irritating it must be, if you live in the crowded Ladbroke Grove area of west London, to have a neighbour like Reade Griffith, an American hedge-fund manager who has received planning permission for a vast basement extension to his house that will take many months to excavate. Fellow residents of Kensington and Chelsea, other than those wealthy enough to have similar schemes in mind, will probably think it serves him right that he has been charged an £825,000 ‘Section 106’

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke’s joy at a two-speed oscilating fan in la chaleur TGV

Hotel Trepaner, St Raphael, French Riviera: I have read all ten reviews on this site. The overall rating (given by five of the ten reviewers) is ‘terrible’. ‘Disastreux!’ says Kimi. ‘Affreux!’ moans M Lanie. ‘A frightful hotel run by a slum landlord,’ claims Juliet45. After staying at the Hotel Trepaner for a week at the beginning of August, my opinion is that the majority of these reviews are snobbish and unfair. What, may I ask, were you people expecting for that price? A chocolate medallion on your pillow every night? It’s the cheapest hotel on the French Riviera, for goodness sake! Up the road in Nice, 60 quid a day

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Whisper it, but the big banks are finally getting their houses in order

By and large it was a good week for the big banks — underpinned by encouraging news from the wider economy, in which every little uptick brings a few more zombie borrowers back to the land of the living. Lloyds returned to profit, promised to start paying decent dividends again and declared itself oven-ready for return to the private sector, with the market anticipating an immediate sale to institutions of a first tranche of the taxpayers’ 39 per cent stake. HSBC reported varied performance around the world but still clocked up a fat result for the half-year — and asked the Vatican to close its account as part of a

Thursday

James Delingpole

Notes on…Normandy

There are some, I know, who for whom Normandy means the three Cs — cider, cream and calvados. But if, like me, you’re more of a three B person — beaches, bocage and the Bayeux tapestry — then the place from which to assault all three is the relatively unknown fishing village of Port-en-Bessin. Everyone visits the spectacular US cemetery of dazzling white marble and the pillboxes at Omaha beach, and rightly so, for together with the similarly well-preserved clifftop battery taken by the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc, it’s the perfect Saving Private Ryan experience. What everyone also does, I hope, is visit the beaches where our

Thursday

Peter Phillips

Fête de la Musique: Couldn’t we just get over ourselves, risk a bit of foreign and join

One of the many cultural initiatives to have come out of France in the past 50 years — and therefore by definition to have been viewed with suspicion by the British establishment — is the Fête de la Musique. One need look no further than Margaret Thatcher and Unesco to get the flavour of what follows; but so complete has been the disinterest in the Fête around here that even I, Europhile to the core and anyway booked to perform in Paris on 21 June, had no idea what I was contributing to. This Fête began life in 1982 when Jack Lang, then minister of culture in Paris, framed a

Philip Delves-Broughton

Watch out France: Nicolas Sarkozy is back, and he wants revenge

Nicolas Sarkozy is angry — a ‘caged lion’, one of his closest friends told Le Monde last week. He is angry about the state of France, the state of his party, his perceived persecution by the courts, but perhaps most of all about the fact that he isn’t in the Élysée Palace to clean the mess up. If the French were to clamour for his return, he is reported to have told a Goldman Sachs conference in London this month, he would come back ‘for duty’s sake’. But Sarkozy is no Cincinnatus. He would not be treading wearily back from his plough to assume office for the good of France.

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Chronicle of a Summer: Reality TV decades before it had a name

Here’s a documentary called Chronicle of a Summer. Which summer? Why, the summer of 1960, in Paris, when fag-end colonial struggles were burning away in Algeria and other parts of Africa. And how is it chronicled? An anthropologist and a sociologist, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, put cameras on the streets and ask questions of the people they find. Who are you? Are you happy? The usual French existential stuff. The results are gripping, even from a distance of more than 50 years. Rouch and Morin focus on the personal; the everyday lives of factory workers, artists, immigrants, models and students. But when France’s present and recent past break into

Tuesday

Shiraz Maher

Countering Terrorism in Britain and France, by Frank Foley – review

Have you ever wondered why we’re stuck with the radical cleric Abu Qatada? It’s a question the last four Home Secretaries will have asked as they battled, and failed, to deport him. Now Theresa May is learning just how stubborn the old curmudgeon can be. Indeed, the whole issue of deporting terror suspects is a difficult one. In the nine years that followed the 9/11 attacks, France deported 129 individuals considered to be threats to national security, while we removed just nine. The intransigence of British judges is not new. Long before the ‘War on Terror’ brought matters of international security to public attention, the French had been pursuing Rachid

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

The lesson of France and Italy – the worse the country, the better the wine

Although I promise to move on to drink, forgive me for beginning with a less interesting but even more complex subject: government. It is easy to patronise the Italians. The Risorgimento was a failure (See David Gilmour’s superb The Pursuit of Italy). Since the days of Cavour’s Machiavellianism and Garibaldi’s Cav and Pag bravura, the Italian political system has suffered a steady haemorrhage of authority and prestige, with the partial exception of the Mussolini era. By the 1950s, the serious people in Italy had come to one of three conclusions. The first lot decided that the Italians were not fit to govern themselves. This explains the Euro-enthusiasm of the Montis,